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Abstract
The article takes an insight into the nature of the oil based mono-cultural economy of Nigeria, providing an in-depth analysis of the situation. It clearly assesses the oil resource based economy, highlights the impacts- positive and negative on Nigeria's economic development and why Nigeria urgently needs to diversify its economy away from oil resource dependence. If Nigeria will not change the oil dependency economy, there will be grave implications for its economic growth and development as it already negatively affects annual budgetary provisions and other fiscal responsibilities. As it is well known, Nigeria is one of the foremost countries in the global oil export, with disruptions in its supply affecting the international oil market in some ways, huge reliance on oil as a resource has seen one of the foremost economies in Africa challenged in her economic growth and development with oil price volatility and decline on the global market. The research made use of secondary data to assess the situation and also drew the conclusion that Nigeria needs to diversify her economy as reliance on a basic resource discourages growth.
Keywords: Nigeria; mono-cultural; economy; oil; price volatility;
JEL Code: O13
1.Introduction
Nigeria in 2014 attained the status of the foremost economy in Africa, overtaking South Africa which had occupied the position for many years. An assessment of the position attained by Nigeria showed that the revenue from oil exports contributed greatly to it. Although, for the first time, other sectors were adequately assessed to reflect the country's GDP which resulted in a higher position than that of South Africa. Trading Economics (2016) indicates that Nigeria's GDP was put at USD 568.50 billion in 2014. Crude oil export contributes enormously to the GDP figure following its accounting for nearly 90% of export product. With the decline in oil revenue since 2014 and continued price volatility, Nigeria found itself faced with many fiscal challenges including funding of annual budgets and other fiscal responsibilities. Recently in 2016, it was revealed in the news that Nigeria slid into recession and South Africa overtook Nigeria again as the foremost economy on the African Continent. Nigeria's case is compounded and challenged by various national problems such as terrorism in the north and militancy in the south-south, which further...